The association between inflammatory biomarkers and metabolically healthy obesity depends of the definition used

Abstract

Background/Objectives: To assess the distribution of interleukin (IL)-1b, IL-6, tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-a and C-reactive protein (CRP) according to the different definitions of metabolically healthy obesity (MHO). Subjects/Methods: A total of 881 obese (body mass index (BMI) X30 kg/m 2 ) subjects derived from the population-based CoLaus Study participated in this study. MHO was defined using six sets of criteria including different combinations of waist, blood pressure, total high-density lipoprotein cholesterol or low-density lipoprotein -cholesterol, triglycerides, fasting glucose, homeostasis model, high-sensitivity CRP, and personal history of cardiovascular, respiratory or metabolic diseases. IL-1b, IL-6 and TNF-a were assessed by multiplexed flow cytometric assay. CRP was assessed by immunoassay. Results: On bivariate analysis some, but not all, definitions of MHO led to significantly lower levels of IL-6, TNF-a and CRP compared with non-MH obese subjects. Most of these differences became nonsignificant after multivariate analysis. An posteriori analysis showed a statistical power between 9 and 79%, depending on the inflammatory biomarker and MHO definition considered. Further increasing sample size to overweight þ obese individuals (BMIX25 kg/m 2 , n ¼ 2917) showed metabolically healthy status to be significantly associated with lower levels of CRP, while no association was found for IL-1b. Significantly lower IL-6 and TNF-a levels were also found with some but not all MHO definitions, the differences in IL-6 becoming nonsignificant after adjusting for abdominal obesity or percent body fat. Conclusions: MHO individuals present with decreased levels of CRP and, depending on MHO definition, also with decreased levels in IL-6 and TNF-a. Conversely, no association with IL-1b levels was found.

Increased Cardiometabolic Risk Factors and Inflammation in Adipose Tissue in Obese Subjects Classified as Metabolically Healthy

“…Furthermore, fibrinogen concentrations in both cohorts and the leukocyte number, analyzed only in cohort 1, were elevated in both obese groups. Our results regarding inflammation are similar to those reported in previous studies (12,13,26,27,32,34) but contrast with others (8,24,26,35,36). The younger age of the MHO subjects in most of the latter studies may explain this discrepancy.…”

“…The lack of consensus criteria to define MHO does not allow the accurate estimation of the prevalence of the MHO and MAO phenotypes, making the comparison between different studies difficult (4,7). In this sense, the reported prevalence of MHO varies widely, ranging from 3 to 57% of obese patients, depending on the method used to define this condition (5,(8)(9)(10).…”

Maternal obesity drives functional alterations in uterine NK cells

“…Incomplete sample segregation was somewhat expected as obesity itself may well be a heterogeneous condition composed of individuals having both healthy/unhealthy metabolism presenting without/with chronic inflammation (44). This latter point is crucial and is illustrated in our sample cohort in which obese women measuring healthy (low) serum CRP levels comprised 12% of women in our cohort.…”

Associations between mood, anxiety or substance use disorders and inflammatory markers after adjustment for multiple covariates in a population-based study

“…Proinflammatory cytokines such as interleukin (IL)-1b, IL-6 or tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-a (Dowlati et al, 2010;Mota et al, 2013) induce the production of acute-phase proteins including the Creactive protein (CRP) (Maes et al, 1997), which is a common marker of underlying low-grade inflammation (Ford and Erlinger, 2004). Cytokines and the CRP have been found to be associated with CVRFs such as diabetes (Marques-Vidal et al, 2012a), overweight (Marques-Vidal et al, 2012b) and smoking (Yanbaeva et al, 2007), as well as with several mental disorders.…”